How about baking your muffins, mini cakes or other dessert creations in these parchment bunny cubes? Not only are they substituting the plain old muffin paper cup, but they also serve as a cute and convenient wrapping. You can give them away as a gift, include them in a packed lunch or hide them outside in the garden at Easter for children to find. The bunny cubes are easy to fold and inexpensive. Why not make one right now? I’m sure you have parchment paper and basic muffin ingredients at hand.

You can try the recipe for the fluffy and moist cream cheese muffins provided in this post to fill the bunnies, but I guess other muffin or cake mixtures should work fine as well, as long as they don’t expand too much. Since the parchment paper is kind of acting like a seal, you might want to lessen the amount of liquid ingredients.

Let me give you some insight on how the idea of the bunny muffin was born. Not long ago, I wanted to Coinstar fees make a square cake. I didn’t have a square cake pan and buying one was not an option after looking at some price tags. Then it came to my mind that I could simply fold a parchment paper box. It’s simple, inexpensive, and I can even adjust the size. I skimmed through my origami books (origami: traditional Japanese folk art of paper folding) in search for box folding instructions, and that was when I stumbled upon the bunny cube balloon. The idea to bake muffins in these bunny balloons hit me immediately. Since Easter is approaching, it was perfect.
Oh and by the way, I did bake a square cake in a suitable parchment paper origami box (that even included handles!) but that’s another story.

How to make the Paper Bunny Cube

You need square pieces of parchment paper. For the large bunnies, I used 21×21 cm, for medium 16×16 cm and for the small ones 12×12 cm.

I’ve found the instructions for folding the bunny in the book 親子で遊ぶかんたんおりがみ (oyako de asobu kantan origami) which is aimed at children, so don’t nag about it being too difficult :-D

I’m rather bad at explaining origami steps, but luckily I’ve found this comprehensible diagram at origami-club.com. Check out their other tutorials if you’re interested in origami, they’re very easy to understand and even accompanied by animations.

Thinking that you later use the bunny to serve food in, I must admit that the part where you have to blow up the balloon by mouth might appear a bit unhygienic. Maybe you can find other measures to inflate it. Or just try to firmly believe that the oven temperature will kill off the bacteria.

How to make Cream Cheese Muffins baked in Bunny Cubes

The recipe for the cream cheese muffins is from Harumi Kurihara’s book Harumi’s Japanese Cooking. Originally, the muffins are meant to be heated in the microwave. Since I didn’t have access to a microwave, I had to adapt the recipe.

Makes 3 L, 3 M and 3 S size bunnies

40g cream cheese

1/2 Tbs white wine

1 Tbs cream

1 Tbs vegetable oil

vanilla essence

2 medium sized eggs

50g sugar

50g flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

Whisk cream cheese and white wine together until creamy in a bowl that you placed into another bowl filled with hot tap water.

Mix in cream, oil and vanilla essence.

Beat the eggs in a separate bowl and whisk together with the sugar until the mixture thickens.

I then filled the mixture into an empty condiment container. You can also use a piping bag or an empty plastic ketchup bottle – anything that’s squeezable and has a tip should work.

Squeeze the mixture into the bunny cubes until they’re a bit less than half full. It’s like bottle-feeding the bunny :-). Be careful not to make a mess. Stains on the parchment paper will later become dark and clearly visible.

Bake in the preheated oven at 160°C. Approximately, the small bunnies will take 15, the medium bunnies 20 and the large bunnies 25 minutes.

yes! two things I love: baking and origami. I remember making these bunnies a long time ago back in elementary school. How fun! I’ll definitely be trying this out next time I have the urge to have muffins :).

Thank you monica! I’m not sure if the acidity of the white wine is needed for some kind of reaction with the baking powder (really just guessing here!) so I think maybe buttermilk would be a good substitute. Or carrot juice with a splash of lemon juice might be nice. Hope that works. Good luck!

I absolutely loved this idea, and my son adores folding origami so we had fun making them today for Easter presents but a warning… This is really time consuming! Folding origami bunnies from baking paper (parchment)is no east feat, it’s slippery and rolls up.

You also have to get the right size so it all has to be cut exactly. We made 4 x the mixture in the recipe and that made about 20 bunnies (starting with squares about 21×21cm’s)

But the end product looks so cute, and is delicious (we added grated carrot to the recipe so it was carrot and cream cheese muffins)

To go with it we made spiced hot-chocolate spoons (that I got the idea from from a link off your site) but changed the recipe by making a chocolate ganache from dark & white chocolate, cream, chilli, mixed spices and marshmallows and setting them onto supermarket-bought teaspoons.

We also tried your chocolate painting technique to make bunnies – not bad for a first attempt, but would like to hone the skill – your Audrey Hepburn is divine.

i just tried to make these. Bunny experiment failed :( I didn’t have a ketchup bottle so I used an eyedropper for some of them, and a sandwich bag for some, to get the batter in. We only had the patience to make three bunnies, as well, and I don’t think I filled them enough. Cute idea though.

Hi JoJo, as a cake decorator i was googling ‘ chocolate colouring’ for a wedding cake and came across your wonderful chocolates! I love your blog and am going to have a go at the bunnies. I was a big origami fan as a kid, though its been a few years!! You are very talented and creative so keep it up, I am looking forward to seeing more!

Hi, Thanks for the wonderful inspiration. What a creative mind you have! Blogged about my attempt at these bunnies here [http://makejanemake.blogspot.com/2011/04/bunny-day-treat.html] They were a big hit with moms and kids alike :)

I made these for Easter and they were a huge hit with the family. I used my own almond cake recipe, I didn’t have cream cheese available. Will have to try your cake recipe though, it sounds delicious! I posted them on my blog and linked back to your post. Thank you so much for sharing this fun idea!